I had a dream last night. Back story: A dozen years ago I dated a really cool guy. We’re still friends. On the first date we talked about the importance of being honest, so we shared with each other the relationship tendency previous partners most pointed out to us that we would most like to change. I copped to being a self centered workaholic, controlling and distant. He said he had a tendency to let women take care of him financially.  A few months after that he called it quits, the day after his mom called me to chat. She’d gotten on the topic of how much he mooched off her and had her paying for meals (always the most expensive item on the menu, she said) and she hoped he wasn’t doing that to me. I laughed and said we’d had the chat and we’d be each paying our own way. In retrospect, she might have been feeling out how “flush” I actually was and she let him know I didn’t measure up. Rejection is protection.